Yes, another post on security, but this time from a little different perspective. Check out my software review page for Retroshare, this will give you an indication of where I am headed with this. The internet is replete with articles on how computers all across the world are having their communications hacked, intercepted, or observed. This article will provide a couple of pointers on how you can secure your communications and prevent this activity. The first thing you can do is install a program like Retroshare, if you are sharing files across the internet or network or want secured peer chat/communications. Retroshare provides an SSL encrypted communications tunnel to prevent digital eavesdropping. There are other encrypted communications software available, you can check sites like Snapfiles for options. Secure surfing is a concern for everyone. Your IP address is hanging out there for the world to see and track. Luckily, there are tools to assist in masking your IP from predators. These tools are called VPNs, which are Virtual Private Networks. These networks show a public IP that is different from your true IP. There are many types of VPN services available, check here for some options: VPN Reviews. A couple of things to be aware of when selecting a good VPN service. First, is there a bandwidth cap. Some VPNs that are inexpensive keep costs down by enforcing monthly caps. Next is the speed because, just like bandwidth, limiting the speed keeps costs down. You also need to make sure that the VPN client software meets your system requirements, i.e. Windows, Mac or Linux. Then make sure that the VPN service is on the up-and-up, do your due diligence on the internet and check out what kind of reputation the VPN provider has, and that will tell you plenty about it. And finally, check out the type of information the provider logs about you. It doesn't do a whole lot of good to get a VPN for privacy and security if the provider itself is keeping detailed logs of your actions. So, what if you want to utilize the wondrous cloud that the entire world seems to be smitten with, how do you protect your files there? Some cloud storage companies offer encrypted storage, but usually at a premium price, and that usually doesn't cover the connection to the service which is left wide open. This is where an application like Cloudfogger comes in handy. Cloudfogger is a free application that encrypts your files before you send them to the cloud service, whether it be Dropbox, SkyDrive, or Google Drive. Cloudfogger creates a virtual drive X: that can point to a specific location on your computer or your cloud storage service. Similar to Retroshare, Cloudfogger creates an individual ID that you can share with others to decrypt files that you encrypted so that they can access your cloud if you desire. A final layer of security of this type would be a program like Axcrypt that encrypts files on the computer itself with minimal hassle. Axcrypt places an entry into the right-click menu where you can encrypt files simply and easily. This prevents prying eyes and snoops from getting into information that you don't want them to see. As an additional note, I found a good tutorial on encrypting email if you have Outlook installed on your system. The instructions are here - and I found them to be quite simple and effective. If you follow these simple steps you can ensure that your information sent over the internet is kept confidential and secure.

We live in a time where information is just as much of a commodity as food, water, and fuel. With the Internet at the top of its prime, its serves some sort of purpose to just about any person you can think of…some tech savvy, others not. Online banking, job applications, filing taxes, buying books (or anything else for that matter), attending schools, and even paying bills, all things people do on a daily basis…and all potentially ways to fall prey to identity theft. Don’t get me wrong, there are a vast majority of legitimate services provided, and also an equal representation of evil doers ready to exploit you for that precious information you hold on to so tightly (or at least you should be). The internet is not the only place where people have their sights set on you. Grocery stores, malls, fairs, lawn and garden expos, you name it, all can be information hunting grounds. Social media is rapidly becoming the largest honey-hole for person info…yes, the same Facebook’s and Twitter’s that we’ve all grown to depend on. So today, I will try to raise your awareness and lead you down the path of knowledge. For the purpose of this writing I will refer to personal information as PI. First let me start by stating, for more technically inclined people, this is not news. My target audience is the folks who are new to advancing technology and wish to learn the basic preventative measures in protecting their information. You cannot be afraid to go out and experience what the world has to offer, you just have to be conscience of the threats that lie and wait. Some threats are more obvious that others, so let’s start with the no-brainers. We should all know by now not to give credit card info to anyone we cannot verify…that is just common sense. What about when you THINK you are giving that info to a trusted source? Scammers have become more sophisticated as the times have changed. Tricks like URL jacking redirect users from a legitimate secure site to a site that seems to appear to be the same site you frequently enter sensitive data into, leaving users clueless to the fact that they willingly handed over a social security number, credit card number, or bank account number. So how does one combat such tom-foolery? When entering PI, make sure the sites URL starts with HTTPS, not just HTTP. This means that you are at very least secure. My own personal practice is never using my credit card or bank card for internet transactions. Use a prepaid Visa or Master Card or a secure site like PayPal to make your transactions. The internet gets a bad rap for this, but what most people do not take into consideration is that this same fraud strikes consumers at places like restaurants every day. The best practice is to pay cash when you can. Sure monetary loss is devastating, but what about losing your identity. Your social security number is the one thing that absolutely identifies you as you. How many people reading this have extended their education past high school? Most if not all of us have had to file for federal financial aid. FAFSA is the online tool you use to accomplish this goal. In this process, you enter things like social security numbers, phone numbers, home address, income, age, family member and their info, which is all necessary for the government to help identify you and assist you financially. What if it wasn’t the government that got that info? Who gets that information can depend on three little letters. www.fafsa.org is the federal site that we use for financial aid, www.fafsa.com is not. Both sites are almost identical, but the .com site is selling you FAFSA application assistance to which you don’t figure out until you have already provided all of that sensitive data. Another not so threatening, but equally annoying, scam is sweepstakes and giveaways. Name, address, phone number, that is all you need to provide to win the new car…which you never do. The winner is the people collecting those entries. Now they can sell your contact information for profit, and you gave it to them willingly. This happens at grocery stores, state fairs, home and garden expos, and even at local malls. Giving away PI for the chance to win a prize is foolish as the odds are always against you and never for the recipient of your info. The best way to avoid being scammed is to only give your information to a trusted represented to which you can verify his or her credentials. Last but not least I will touch on social media. I won’t speak long on this because this topic has received ample media attention as of recently. The biggest outrage has been employers asking for Facebook passwords to access personal accounts and scour their info. There can be a plethora of information about yourself on your Facebook page that employers can user to evaluate you as a person. There are a couple of ways to combat this, one, create a bogus account for just this type of situation. Another is to safeguard PI and lock down your account as tight as possible. An account with little to no security settings can easily be probed using a free tool called Searchbook. Remember that whatever you put out there stays out there, so make it as hard as possible to find or just updated your status with non-PI type data. This is just a brief look at some of the issues that people face when it comes to safeguarding PI. I hope I have at least entertained the thought of privacy protection and raised your awareness to some of the risk you could face in your day to day operations. Knowledge is power; keeping educating yourself and you be will not be the next victim of identity theft or PI loss.

Over the years Google has become the name of web search. It's undisputed. No "ifs" "ands" or "buts" about it. But there are a portion of people who are becoming disenchanted with Google's practices with user information and privacy concerns. There is a website that has been around for a bit called DuckDuckGo. This site is a search engine like Google and works in the same manner for the most part. You type in a search query and it returns relevant results. But users of the DuckDuckGo site have reported that they like the clean interface more than what's Google's has been like lately. Below are some screenshots:

Both were taken with the same search term used. To me I don't see a whole lot of difference in the interface. There are a few social icons at the top of the Google page, and a menu bar, but to me both are not that distracting. The other appeal to the DuckDuckGo site is that it does not collect any user data at all. Their privacy policy is well written and easily understood without a lot of technical jargon to have to sift through. But to boil it all down, the site does not send any of your search data to the sites you visit, does not retain any of the data itself, and uses native HTTPS for added security. How the search results themselves stack up is yet to be determined, although some users have said that Google still gives the best results. As DuckDuckGo gets mature and refines its search algorithms it will begin to be a major competitor in search vs. search. I have used it myself, and indeed it is my default search engine at work. If you value privacy or just don't like Google, give DuckDuckGo a spin. It also has a plugin for Firefox that makes it the default search engine.

Well, in an interesting turn of events (read ridiculous), Microsoft has announced that it is not bringing the Aero interface to Windows 8. According the MS, the glass borders, drop shadows, rounded edges, glows etc. are too old-fashioned. The Windows 8 GUI (graphical user interface) with it's flat colors, squared edges, and plain interface is the new trendy, cool look that everyone will be swooning over. Personally, I don't buy it. First off, let me say that I understand that Microsoft is looking to finally get with the market and perhaps even go a little further with a move to mobile that is more of a heavy hitter than their previous attempts. By tailoring their desktop OS with their mobile OS, they leverage their dominance in one market for relevance in another. I get it. And in defense of MS, it's a smart move for them because they haven't had much luck in getting into the mobile market lately with other initiatives. The real problem is this move to the cloud, which I really, really hate. Most tech companies are talking about the move to the cloud as the impetus for the popularity of mobile. It may even be true. But with the state of broadband access, infrastructure, and speeds in this country, the reliance on cloud. Comcast and Verizon are two companies that lately have announced caps on data, both home and mobile. Verizon is even forcing it's users who were grandfathered on unlimited wireless to limited tier plans. So I don't see the cloud as a fiscally responsible alternative. But back to Windows 8. I am not going to predict whether it will be a win or a failure at this point. I am pragmatic enough to see that it is an almost necessary move for MS to keep some form of hand in the game as the inevitable future of Operating Systems is not in the heavy desktop arena where they have a dominance. The future is in the very satisfaction of the user market which will change based on new tech, new appeal, and new supply/demand of applications. By making the desktop look just like the phone or tablet OS, users will feel the migration to a Windows phone to be a natural evolution in their technology assets. Or at least that is what MS hopes for anyway. I think though that the enterprise market will have something to say about that Metro interface in relation to corporate productivity. Either which way it goes however, I am sure that the lack of Aero is not going to be that heavy of a factor in its success. But it is still going to be UGLY.

Recently Ubuntu announced a partnership with the Android OS to provide full desktop functionality on a cell phone when docked. At first, this doesn't sound like any sort of addition. I mean, who cares if a phone has a desktop, it's a phone right? This particular announcement has made headlines in the IT world for many reasons, some good and some bad. I keep up with a few of the tech magazines for both the articles and the comments. The articles I read to keep up on tech announcements and advances obviously, but I keep up on the comments to see the public reaction. The comments are often broken down into different camps, depending on the tech topic. For example, the phone camp is iOS (iPhone), Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone. Desktop camp is Windows, OSX (Mac), and Linux. Both sets of camps have commented on this topic, weighing in heavily on the applicability and relativity of using Ubuntu Desktop with Android. How does this work you ask? Well, if you don't want to read through the article I linked above, here is a synopsis: The phone will run Android when using it simply as a phone, very mobile and light. However, when you get back to the office or back home you will plug the phone into a dock or cradle that will have a mouse, keyboard and monitor attached. The phone will then go into desktop mode, showing the Ubuntu Desktop, thereby providing full functionality. The benefit of this arrangement is that all of the mobile data and information - contacts, emails, notes, etc.- no longer have to be synced with your desktop, they are readily available. Pros: no longer need a separate desktop or laptop; ready access you all of your data rather than having to fetch from the cloud, or pulled from your machine back at the office; lower total cost of ownership not having to maintain multiple sets of hardware and software; entry of Open Source technologies into the mainstream market; increased mobility of users (no lugging around large amounts of equipment); streamlined data flow; less IT management cost for companies overall. Cons: lack of adequate storage space to make it completely effective for all users; learning curve with Ubuntu (and Linux in general) for both users and IT; increase in security concerns with all that data being mobile; users in the office may not have the availability to dock at home; lack of adoption due to IT infrastructure in company being unable to support Linux without additional upfront investment in training or equipment; lack of appeal to home users. So, it really is an interesting time right now in the mobile market. Personally I am a big Linux fan, and I would use this technology almost immediately, if I could afford it. But as far as the market is concerned, it is going to be a matter of adoption by the masses and in my mind that is a toss-up right now. Corporate users will be locked into whatever the company is able to support for the most part, with a few companies who already use Linux being the first adopters. Security for those users will be a deciding factor, not of the OS itself but of the human element with the larger amounts of data that will be mobile. The cloud will help that issue somewhat, but then that kind of defeats one of the purposes of the Ubuntu Desktop.

Author

Arthur Whitehouse - Technician: I am a Microsoft and CompTIA certified professional. I have been in the business since 2000. My main focus is on end-user functionality and providing alternatives to what mainstream users are force fed as the way it "should" be in personal computing.